Recent research, presented at Digestive Disease Week 2019, finds that various types of physical activity including walking and strength exercises are connected to the reduced risk of dying from cirrhosis.

For the study, the researchers prospectively followed 68,449 women from the Nurses’ Health Study and 48,748 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. None of them had liver disease diagnosis at baseline.

Participants of the study provided data on physical activity, which included type and intensity, every two years from 1986 through 2012. These data allowed researchers to examine the link between physical activity and cirrhosis-associated death.

Lead researcher of the study Tracey Simon, MD and instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, says: “Our findings show that both walking and strength training contribute to substantial reductions in risk of cirrhosis-related death, which is significant because we know very little about modifiable risk factors.”

A new study, executed by scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, finds that a compound in leafy green vegetables may help prevent nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

A team of scientists studied the effect of the leafy greens in mice, dividing them into three groups with different diets. One group received a high-fat diet, an equivalent to a Western diet. Another group received the same food but supplemented with inorganic nitrate, a compound found in leafy greens. The third group, a control group, received a normal diet.

One of the senior researchers Mattias Carlström, an associate professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the Karolinska Institutet, says: “When we supplemented with dietary nitrate to mice fed with a high-fat and sugar Western diet, we noticed a significantly lower proportion of fat in the liver.”

According to the research, published in The BMJ, analyzing the findings of 200 studies, three to four cups of coffee every day can be associated with longer life and lower risk of some cancers, diabetes, liver disease, and dementia.

Nevertheless, the scientists say that drinking coffee in pregnancy is linked to harms and can be connected to the slightly increased risk of fracture in women.

The authors conclude that drinking coffee seems safe within usual patterns of consumption, except during pregnancy and in women with higher risk of fracture. At the same time, coffee is often consumed with products rich in refined sugars and unhealthy fats which may independently contribute to adverse health outcomes.

A new study, published in the Journal of Hematology, adds to the growing body of evidence that consuming too high amount of sweetened beverages linked to the higher risk of fatty liver disease in children.

Having studied 271 obese children and adolescents within the study, the researchers found that children and adolescents who consumed high amounts of fructose, mostly from sweetened beverages, were more likely to have non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a form of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Senior investigator Dr. Valerio Nobili, of the Bambino Gesu Hospital in Italy, says: “In the study, we show for the first time that uric acid concentrations and dietary fructose consumption are independently and positively associated with NASH.”

A small German study finds that a meal high in saturated fat, for example, a cheeseburger with fries or a pizza, may disrupt liver function.

A team of researchers discovered that the high levels of saturated fat immediately change the way our liver works, leading for serious diseases in the future.

Dr. Michael Roden, a study co-author and a scientific director of the German Diabetes Center at Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf, says: “Our findings paint the picture of the earliest changes in liver metabolism leading to fatty liver diseases and liver cirrhosis in the context of obesity and type 2 diabetes.”